GreenEyed Monster
by lionesseyes13
Summary: Vignettes exploring the life and character of the infamous, lovely Delia of Eldorne. Rated T for later chapters. Written for the Summer Challenge at TPE.
1. Chapter 1

_Freedom_

Blades of grass tickled the soft soles of five-year-old Delia's bare feet and wildflowers blooming in every color of the rainbow curled around her toes as she dashed through one of Castle Eldorne's many gardens. The May wind blew roses into her cheeks, the sun warmed her back underneath her silk dress, and the singing of the birds arrayed like heralds on the garden walls made a perfect counterpoint to her giggles as she ran through the garden.

Delia knew that her dress was soaked with sweat, and that the ribbons Nurse had taken so long to braid into her hair had come undone, but that knowledge only added to her happiness. Being unkempt and grimy meant that she was free—that she had successfully escaped from her lessons—and that she really was running, as free as a peasant child, through grass and wildflowers. Taking pleasure in every blade of grass that brushed past her feet and every breeze that smacked against her cheeks, she thought that if she could run free forever and not get tired, she would never want to do anything else.

However, with Nurse to look after her, she would never be able to run forever, she realized bitterly when she heard a sharp female voice call out from the other side of the gardens, "Come back here this instant, young lady!"

Sighing and scowling, Delia trudged over to Nurse.

"How dare you sneak off from your lessons with your governess to go running around like a peasant?" demanded Nurse, glowering as she scooped up her errant young charge and balanced the little girl on her ample hip. Her hazel eyes snapping, Nurse examined Delia's feet and tutted. "Great Mother preserve me, you didn't even think to put on your shoes. Now I'll have to wash your feet again, because they are filthy. Oh, and your ribbons have come undone, too, and your dress looks like you wore it into a battle. Your mother won't be happy to hear that you keep ruining all the pretty clothes she has the seamstresses make for you."

"Mother won't be happy to hear that you let me ruin more clothes," remarked Delia, her green eyes widening innocently under her chestnut bangs. "Maybe it would just be better if Mother didn't know about the ruined clothing."

"My dear Delia, you are too clever for your own good." Shaking her head, Nurse tapped Delia on the nose as if she were a naughty kitten. "How you can be so smart when you skip so many of your lessons is beyond my understanding."

"Governess always repeats her lessons," Delia explained, emitting a long-suffering sigh. "Today she wanted to teach me how to write my name as if I haven't known how to do that for the past month."

"Well, don't tell your father that, love." Nurse's lips thinned. "He doesn't want you to become so clever that you scare away all the young men that will eventually swarm around your beauty. It's best if you let him and your governess continue to think that you can't write your own name for another week or so."

"I'm free to keep playing the fool and racing around the gardens when I should be in lessons, then, aren't I, Nurse?" Delia asked, twisting her head to offer Nurse her most charming smile.

"Not in this century, dear." Nurse chuckled. "We want to keep you as pretty as may be and as free of dirt stains as possible."

"I don't like wearing shoes." Delia pouted. "I like feeling the earth beneath my feet when I run."

"You shouldn't be running at all, young lady," pointed out Nurse sternly. "Ladies don't run. They glide, or, if situations are extreme enough to justify the gesture, hasten."

"That doesn't sound like much fun," grumbled Delia, as Nurse carried her back into the shadow of the cool castle where she was no longer free and had to go back to being a young lady in training.


	2. Chapter 2

_Scorching_

Scorching, Delia thought, didn't even begin to describe how she felt. Both she and her roommate of three years, Cythera of Elden, who had probably been paired with her when they first arrived at the convent because of the alphabetical proximity of their fief names, were sprawled on their beds, hoping to feel a faint breeze from their open window brush across their foreheads, which were damp from sweat.

They were supposed to be attending a dance class right now, but it was simply too hot to think about rolling off their beds, nonetheless hastening down the stuffy corridors to sweat buckets and have sweaty girls stomp on their toes. Besides, it was Cythera's birthday, and she deserved better than a dance class—and certainly better than the handkerchief her parents had sent her as a gift.

"I can't believe my parents sent me a handkerchief with the exact same pattern on it that they did last year." Cythera sighed, twisting the handkerchief around in her hands as if seeking an angle from which to admire it. "And why roses two years in row, anyway? If they're going to give me a bad present, they should at least try to give me something, however small, to like about it."

"Come now, dear," Delia said, her emerald eyes sparking with mischief as she did her best imitation at an admonishing priestess. "I'm sure there are plenty of things to like about that handkerchief."

"Oh, really?" Cythera arched a beautifully plucked eyebrow in challenge. Passing the handkerchief to Delia, she added, "Find some."

"Well, let me think." Delia tapped her lower lip for a minute. Then, putting the handkerchief on her head at a jaunty angle as if it were a fine hat, she continued, "It makes a stylish piece of headgear appropriate for any function. Pull it down over your eyes like so, and it becomes a modest veil any blushing bride would be proud of. Take it off your head, wipe it across your face, and then watch all your sweat miraculously vanish."

"What else does it do?" Cythera asked, smiling slightly as Delia finished demonstrating how to wipe the sweat off a forehead with the handkerchief.

"Why, it becomes a marvelous kite." Completely absorbed in the spirit of the joke now, Delia leaned over on her bed, stuck her arm out of the open window, and dropped the handkerchief.

As the two thirteen-year-olds watched the embroidered fabric sink through the heavy, hot air, Cythera chuckled. "Do you think a handsome knight will come pick up the handkerchief and rescue us from our terrible imprisonment in the Convent of Boredom?"

"Not unless the handsome knight is a lady, as men aren't permitted on the convent grounds." Delia's lips quirked. "I'm afraid that we're trapped here for another two or three years."

"Probably three years with the demerits we'll earn for missing dance class," Cythera said. "I swear it takes about a month's hard work to erase a single demerit, and we'll be lucky to escape with only three demerits for skipping an entire lesson."

"Oh, I'll be most surprised if we get any demerits at all." Delia's lashes fluttered and her mouth twisted into a pout. "I trust that the priestesses will understand your regrettable absence from class when I explain to them that your darling aunt Mildred was suffering through a difficult pregnancy that, by the grace of the Great Mother, she survived and that you were too distraught to attend dance lesson, so naturally I had to remain behind to bathe your face in cold water and hand you smelling salts. Frail creatures that we are, we must try to help one another when we are at our weakest, no?"

"Oh, Delia, you're horrible." Cythera laughed in a way that really meant Delia was wonderful.

"I prefer scorching." Proudly, Delia lifted her chin. "Or on fire."

"You don't even make sense," Cythera managed to choke out through gales of laughter, and Delia thought laughing and crying was really all the same release, so all a friend could do was try to maximize the laughing and minimize the crying.

She hadn't done too badly with that, she decided. After all, with such a lame present, it was remarkable that Cythera had done any laughing at all on her birthday, and her laughter was all thanks to Delia's cleverness. Yes, Delia was scorching and on fire, and she was proud of it.


	3. Chapter 3

Author's Note: A scene of a sexual nature between an unmarried heterosexual couple is the focus of this chapter. Consider this your chance to make an informed decision about your reading material.

_Travel_

Part of Delia still had no idea how she managed to get here, alone with the heir to the throne in his bedchamber. Even now, she didn't know how the exact combination of her feminine wiles—the gleam of perpetual laughter in her eyes, the music always in her tone, the grace in her dance, the dance in her step, the tilt of her head, and the luster of her hair—prompted Duke Roger to take notice of her, initiate her into his plot for the throne, and setting her up to be Prince Jonathan's seductress by introducing her to the prince, who had immediately made a fool of himself attempting to impress her, at a banquet.

All she knew was that she was moving up in the world, and she wasn't on anyone's side but her own. She would ally herself with Roger and warm the prince's bed. She would widen her eyes innocently so that both men would think she would never be a threat to them because her gaze would assure them that she would be forever in their thrall—forever loyal to them. She would play the fool, so that neither of them could suspect that she was clever enough to use her beauty and body—the only tools for advancement that she had at court—against them if need be. She loved neither of them, and she would gladly be either of their queens. Whoever won the power struggle between Jonathan and Roger, she was determined to be the ultimate victor by slyly playing the bottom to her advantage.

Just as Delia wanted to move up in the world, Jonathan apparently wished to do his own traveling. His groping hands, not as gentle or as experienced as Roger's, explored first her breasts, then her stomach, then her thighs, then her backside, and then finally the folds between her legs. Whenever his hands finished exploring a region to their satisfaction, his mouth, smelling strongly of wine, bent to investigate the area in more detail and depth.

She pretended to moan with surprise and delight whenever his fingers or tongue prodded into her in a new (normally painful) way. Letting her palms travel along his body to stroke his chest and then to nurse the bulge between his legs, she permitted her mind to roam back to her childhood. It was the memory of the green grass tickling the soles of her bare feet as she ran through her family's gardens that would give her the strength and courage to act like the coming ordeal was a tremendous pleasure.

A moment later, her recollection of how she had felt so free escaping her lessons allowed her to smile when he claimed her, and the sound of her own wild giggles echoing in her head from so many years ago let her fake ecstasy even as he pounded into her—taking the last physical evidence of a childhood innocence abandoned long ago—in a way that she definitely didn't enjoy.

He had crossed her border, and now, in the eyes of the world, she was as fallen as any fortress ravaged by an enemy general, but she believed that she had risen by falling. Surely, selling her body for a bid at the Crown wasn't too high a price to pay for losing her virginity. After all, her virginity wasn't her, and neither was her body—which had never really been hers, anyway. Her body might be corrupted by the intimate touches of a thousand lecherous men who thought that they could possess her, but her mind—as sharp and as proud as ever—would be running free in a field of grass, forever outside of their reach. She wasn't untouched, but she certainly wasn't deflowered, because the flower had always been in her mind.


	4. Chapter 4

_Fresh_

"You're as lovely as a rose, Lady Delia," murmured Duke Roger, leaning forward on the railing of the balcony to pluck a single rose from a trellis.

Behind them, Delia could hear the peaks and lulls of the music in the ballroom accompanied by the beat of dancing feet and the uneven rhythm of gossip and laughter.

"One without thorns, I hope, Your Grace," she answered, managing to pull her lips into a pretty pout, as if she were in control of this situation, even though she had no idea how she had come to be alone on a moonlit terrace with one of the most handsome and most powerful men in the realm.

"That remains to be seen." His eyes on the moon hanging over their heads, the duke stroked the rose's petals. Then, his gaze still absent, his fingers traveled down to rub the flower's stem, somehow avoiding being cut on the thorns.

Suddenly, his bright eyes burned into her, and, his fingers moving up the flower to savagely rip off the petals, he added, letting the petals drift to the ground, "My cousin, the prince, might be very interested in the roses on your cheeks and the rose you lips make when you pout. Yet, I must, of course, be careful whom I introduce to my beloved prince." He leaned closer and wrapped both arms firmly around her waist. "You would have to prove worthy of the honor of such an introduction."

"I would be grateful," Delia purred. She hadn't seen a man not of her own family in years, but she was smart enough to instinctively grasp this game, where debasing her body was her only chance of increasing her status. Allowing a seductive smile to slowly spread across her face, she tugged one of the duke's hands upward, over her stomach, to rest on her full right breast where the neckline of her gown met her bare skin. The other hand she moved downward, placing it over the secret triangle between her legs. "I assure you, Your Grace, I would show my gratitude as befits a lady."

Actually, she wouldn't. What she was doing now didn't befit a lady. A lady didn't let anyone except her husband—or maybe her fiancé, according to more liberal authorities—fondle her like this. A lady didn't even go out on balconies alone with a man who wasn't a relative, but a lady didn't get any power over men by being an obedient, frigid virgin. She got her power by being aloft enough to seem unattainable, willing enough to be pleasing, and careful enough not to be labeled a slut. It was a dangerous, delicate game, but it was one Delia was ready to play by being the fresh meat to flesh hunters such as Duke Roger—and, perhaps, if her high aim didn't go askew, even the prince.

"Hmm," Duke Roger whispered, biting her ear in a way that was both pleasurable and painful. The hand on her breast deftly slipped under her gown and bodice, where it began kneading her breast. Meanwhile, the fingers on his other hand were rubbing at the petals between her legs through the thin material of her dress and undergarments. "Your company is very pleasing."

"I hope to please you," Delia said, gasping as the fingers exploring her breast gave her nipple a long tug and a sharp pinch. Tears welling in her eyes, she reminded herself that she could not pull away from his groping—not when she was trading her body for an opportunity to use it to seduce Prince Jonathan. Trying to pretend her gasp was ecstasy rather than agony, she continued in a murmur, "You please me."

"What a charming damsel you are." He was pressing himself against her backside now, and she could feel his stiffness and throbbing excitement. Trailing a river of kisses and nips down her neck, he remarked softly, "If you can seduce me, I think you might be able to seduce the prince for me."

Releasing her abruptly, he turned to leave the balcony. As he was about to enter the ballroom, he tossed over his shoulder, "I will provide you with a chance to impress the prince soon. Disappoint him, and consider you life a court, now so fresh, to be dead. As a beautiful, frail rose, you will wither without the water and sunlight only I can give."

As soon as the duke departed, Delia collapsed against the balustrade, wondering whether she had just made herself or destroyed herself. Her gaze locked on the trellis of roses, and she thought that she was like them: beautiful, waiting to be plucked by whoever wanted to possess a prettiness that could only be hurt or even destroyed by the claiming, most alluring when wild, and not without thorns. After all, the duke might have been planning to use her body to manipulate the prince, but she was using her body to manipulate every man she came into contact with. When she willingly gave her body away, she wasn't a victim of abuse. That's what she told the voices in her head that hated the depths she had just sunken to in the hope of a resurrection.


	5. Chapter 5

_Waves_

Delia moaned and blinked furiously to prevent the tears welling in her eyes from streaming down her cheeks. Curled up in a miserable ball on her bed with waves of agony that made her want to rip out her womb with her hands tearing through her abdomen, she thought that, at only eleven, she was dying of pain. No matter what the priestesses said about times of the month like this, she knew that the red streaks of torment dashing through her brain—crimson as the blood trickling from her privates—weren't natural.

Even if she didn't die of pain, she would die of humiliation. She had worn a stunning white gown today, and she hadn't understood why the other girls were laughing at her and pointing at the rear of her dress until a priestess had pulled her aside to suggest that Delia slip a cloth beneath her undergarments. That kindly whisper had been enough to bring all the blood that wasn't pouring out of her to stain her gown to her cheeks.

Then came the throbbing agony in her abdomen and the shame of hurrying through packed hallways to the relative safety of her bedroom, where she could be alone with her bloated, cramping, and bleeding self. She was a hideous, ugly, and unclean creature right now. She didn't deserve to face the world when she couldn't imagine looking at herself in the mirror.

"Delia?" Cythera's hesitant voice accompanied the sound of their bedroom door creaking open. "How are you feeling?"

"Awful." Delia's lower lip trembled from the stress of not breaking down in front of her friend, because she was supposed to be the strong and funny one, not the weak one. "I've seen better days to say the least."

"I thought you might say that." Smiling wanly, Cythera stepped forward to place a bowl of chicken soup on Delia's bedside table. "I brought you something to make you feel a little more yourself."

"Smells good," muttered Delia, rolling closer to the nightstand. Delicious, she thought, would actually have been a more apt adjective for the pungent aroma of spices, meat, and vegetables emitted from the porcelain bowl.

Pushing herself into a sitting position against her pillows and grabbing the warm bowl of soup between her hands sapped all her reserves of energy. In the end, after Delia stared into the bowl for a full minute, Cythera settled onto the bed beside her and began spooning soup into her mouth.

"Tastes wonderful," Delia murmured, feeling some of the waves of pain near her womb subside.

"Feels good, too, I think," Cythera commented, her smile widening as some of the tension left her friend's face.

"How do you know so much about monthlies?" asked Delia, her eyes narrowing. "I haven't seen you dying of misery once a month, and that's not something likely to escape my notice."

"My mother craving soup at a certain time every month didn't escape my notice," Cythera answered wryly. "I certainly won't be getting my monthlies any time soon. I haven't developed up here—" she pointed first at her chest, still almost as flat as a boy's, and then at Delia, which had two growing peaches any farmer would have been proud to have in his orchard—"as fast as you have."

"Bouncy breasts and aching wombs," muttered Delia, hating the reminder of how her bodice pinched her more than ever in its efforts to constrain her ever-expanding chest.

"Don't complain." Cythera wagged a finger at her friend. "Breasts make you beautiful. Everyone knows that men look at breasts and want to discover how soft or firm they are. The other girls are just jealous of how fast you are growing, so they laughed at you when you got your monthlies. They just aren't mature enough to get monthlies, so, of course, they can laugh. You'll have your revenge when they get their monthlies."

"If they ever get them." Delia smirked, and, channeling her own envy of the girls whose monthlies hadn't arrived in a river of blood, she added vindictively, "Janalea of King's Reach, who laughed so loudly, is such a frigid, ugly prude that her body might never feel the need to prepare for a potential pregnancy, because she would never want to sleep with any man, and no man would ever want to sleep with her."

"This is the temperamental, vicious Delia I know and love." Cythera chuckled.

"I'm out for blood," Delia stated between swallows of soup. "I have to replace the blood flowing out of my body before I get light-headed."


End file.
